My system specs. P4 3.0, 1 gig corsair xms pc 3200 ram (with led activity lights...lol), Ge-force FX 5900 256mb, and some other stuff including a big watercooled case... And with all that said, I can run any game I have (UT 2004 being the most graphic intensive) at the higest detail settings without any problems.... usually well above the 70+ FPS mark... so our buddy with the mad crazy system not having the game run good at all either needs to lower their standards some and maybe consideder looking unto some updated drivers for his/her card to start off with... If that dosent help than try buying the pentium 8 processor... ive heard that it really kicks the P4's but.

For the vid card options go with either
- Ge-Force FX 5700 128mb... dont get an MX card they suck
- Radeon 9600XT 128 mb
Both cards are around 150 bucks.... so its prefrence after that... or which one looks cooler in your opinion. Look up some benchmarks and compare cards that are closley priced, and see which ones better for the price.